


don't always know just what to say (but we should talk about it)

by alpacasandravens



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon Compliant, Communication, Gen, Jack being a good bro, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, aka the doctor talking about her feelings and her past for once, yaz being a good bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:33:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23456323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: After Jack breaks her out of prison, the Doctor knows she has to talk to her fam. She just doesn't know what to say.
Relationships: The Doctor & Jack Harkness, The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who), The Doctor & Yasmin Khan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	don't always know just what to say (but we should talk about it)

**Author's Note:**

> posting this before I hate it. i've looked at it too much. enjoy.

“I’ve gotta get back to my fam.” The Doctor sits in the Tardis doorway. Her legs dangle out into empty space, and she looks at her hands instead of the stars before her.

Jack sits beside her. It’s been a long time since she’s seen Jack - far longer for her than it has been for him, though even for him it’s been a few centuries. 

“What are you going to say to them?”

The Doctor shrugs. She doesn’t want to say anything. She wants to be able to pick up her fam and to go off on another adventure. Spa day on Autopia or camping on Colophos, maybe. Somewhere they can see the sights and she can pretend she isn’t running from anything. But that’s not possible anymore.

“I never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant to hurt them.” She takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. “I’m dangerous, Jack. I thought if they didn’t know me well enough, nothing would happen to them. And now… now I don’t know if I can take those walls down.”

“Why don’t you start with that?” His voice is gentle. Understanding.

It’s not fair, really. How kind Jack is to her, after everything she’s done. “Thank you. For breaking me out of prison. For everything.”

Jack bumps her shoulder. “That’s what friends are for, right, Doc?”

“You’re the best friend I could have asked for. Far better than I deserve.”

Jack slips an arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer, until she is leaning against his side. It’s not quite a hug, but it’s half of one, and the Doctor thinks that’s about as much as she can handle. A full-blown hug might have sent her into tears, and she can’t remember the last time she cried. 

“We don’t have to get them yet,” Jack says. “Let’s just sit here a moment.”

The Doctor nods.

Around a day later, though days are hard in space, the Doctor stands at the door of the Tardis, her hand ready to push it open. 

“You can do this,” Jack says. The Doctor doesn’t have to look at him to know he is thinking about his team, about all the times he’d kept secrets from them. It may have been hundreds of years, but he still feels guilty.

The Doctor doesn’t open the door. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re the strongest person I know,” Jack says. “And you have to talk to them eventually. But it doesn’t have to be now.”

“It does,” the Doctor says quietly. 

“Do you need me to come with you?”

The Doctor thinks again that she doesn’t deserve Jack. Doesn’t deserve any of them. She shakes her head and opens the Tardis door.

The Doctor remembers a long time ago, when just the sound of the Tardis’s engines would guarantee a welcoming committee. She’d never particularly cared for Mickey, but now that she opens the door to an empty street, she realizes how much she missed seeing him run down the street towards her and Rose.

The Doctor knocks on Yaz’s door. It is silent for a moment before Yaz’s mum opens the door. She looks tired.

“Is Yaz in?” the Doctor asks. “If she is, can you tell her I’m ready to explain?”

“That’s good, because you’ve got some explaining to do.” Yaz’s mum crosses her arms. “You hurt her.”

The Doctor winces. “I never meant to.” She knows how weak of an excuse that is, and for just a second, she is tempted to just leave. Go back to her Tardis and to Jack and fly off again. Running’s in her bones. But then Yaz appears in the hallway behind her mum, and the Doctor can’t run away now.

“You’re alive!” Yaz’s eyes are red and her voice is a little hysterical -- the Doctor hadn’t realized her fam assumed her dead. They must’ve mourned.

The Doctor gives an awkward little wave. “Hello.”

Graham comes over straight away. Ryan takes a little longer -- he’s in the middle of a video game marathon with his mates, and he calls Yaz back about thirty minutes later. The Doctor’s glad it was only thirty minutes, her nerve is failing. 

When Ryan arrives, Yaz clears her family out of the living room, ignoring her mum’s repeated protests and insisting on “having some space for a few minutes.” The Doctor stands, hands in her pockets, in front of the window, while Ryan, Graham, and Yaz sit around the table. 

“So. What do you want to know?”

Graham speaks first. “How aren’t you dead?”

The Doctor laughs nervously. She can do this. This is an easy question. “Ko Sharmus saved me. He detonated the death particle after giving me time to get away.”

“Death particle?” Ryan asks.

“Something the Cybermen had. It wiped out any life on Gallifrey. I hate that I had to use it, but the Master… the Time Lord Cybermen had to be stopped. There was no other way.” She takes a shaky breath. It was almost freeing to finally say it all, but everything in her still rebelled. Told her to run away, build her walls back up higher than before.

“Where’ve you been these last three weeks?” Yaz asks. “I thought -- we all thought you’d died.”

She doesn’t say it, but the Doctor knows what Yaz is really asking. “Why’d you leave us?”

Three weeks? She’d thought she landed on the same day her fam got back to Earth. That’s when she’d meant to land, anyway. “Space prison. Jack got me out. You remember Jack, right?”

Graham raised his eyebrows to indicate that he did very much remember Jack. 

“What were you in prison for?” Ryan asks.

The Doctor paces in a small circle. “I’d really rather not talk about it.” She doesn’t know how long she was in there for -- time is weird in space prison -- but it was a long time. 

“Okay.” Ryan shrugs. “Just -- are you a criminal, or something?”

“Ryan, she said she’d rather not--” Graham cuts in.

“No, he’s right to ask.” The Doctor stops pacing. “I am. I’ve done… so many things, over more lifetimes than you could imagine. More than even I know,” she adds with a sad laugh. “I told myself not telling you meant keeping you safe. But it turns out I was just running from my past again.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Graham says. “You traveled with us, listened to all of our worries and fears, and didn’t tell us anything about yourself why?”

She sits on the sofa, fighting the urge to curl up in a ball or cry or leave. “I didn’t think you’d like me very much if you knew everything about me. Most days, I don’t like me very much.”

Yaz immediately moves to sit beside the Doctor. “Hey, it’s okay,” she says. “D’you think a hug would help?”

The Doctor shakes her head. “No. It’s not okay. It was shitty of me.”

“It was, a bit,” Graham says. “But I get why you did it, doc.”

“Can you forgive me?”

“Of course,” Yaz says.

Graham nods.

“Yeah,” Ryan says.

“I’ll explain more later,” the Doctor says, “if you want. But… I can’t right now.”

“That’s okay,” Yaz says.

“Thank you,” Ryan says. He pockets his phone and moves to the doorway.

Graham stands up from his chair. “You don’t have to explain everything later,” he says, rummaging through Yaz’s cabinets in search of a glass for water. “If you’ve lived as long as you say, that’s… a lot to carry.”

“D’you need anything?” Yaz asks, and the Doctor must look in bad shape if Yaz is being this kind to her. 

She shakes her head. “I’ll just go back to my Tardis. Take a bit of a lie-down.”

“Come back when you’re ready,” Yaz says with a wry smile. “Just don’t take three weeks this time.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

As the Doctor leaves, she can hear Yaz’s mum re-enter and start asking Yaz questions. She doesn’t blame her. It’s been so many lifetimes, but the Doctor was a parent once. She knows she’s a questionable character, and she doesn’t blame Yaz’s mum for being suspicious. Frankly, she’s a bit surprised her fam were willing to listen to her explanations, after everything she’s put them through.

Yaz doesn’t let her take three weeks. The Doctor doesn’t fly away, but she doesn’t leave the Tardis either. She spends a while doing maintenance on her ship. Then she decides to try baking cookies, and she’s almost got them in the oven when Jack bursts in and ushers her out of the kitchen. He eats some of the raw dough off the tray and makes a face.

“How much salt did you put in these, doc?”

The Doctor thinks. “A bit. Maybe a bit more than a bit.”

Jack throws the dough in the trash. 

They find the pool, a room that the Doctor has never looked for and yet always seems to turn up. But her heart isn’t in their splash fight, and they can both tell.

At the end of the second day, Yaz knocks on the door.

“Yes?” Jack opens it curtly, deliberately standing to block the entire entryway.

“Let me in.”

“Doc’s busy.”

Yaz raises an eyebrow. “I can and will make you move. Let me check on my friend.”

“It’s okay,” the Doctor calls from the console room. She appreciates Jack being protective and knowing when not to flirt, but Yaz belongs here too. He leaves down one of the Tardis’s many long hallways as Yaz enters the room.

“How’re you doing?” Yaz asks, voice soft.

“I’m fine.” It’s an instinctual reply at this point. She is fine, always.

“Are you? You’ve got us worried.”

The Doctor attempts a reassuring smile, but it’s strained, and they can both tell. “Don’t worry about me.”

Yaz doesn’t believe her, but she doesn’t push it. “Okay,” she says. “But remember we’re here for you. I’m here for you. You don’t have to pretend you’re fine all the time.”

She turns to leave. Yaz is almost to the door when the Doctor speaks.

“I burned Gallifrey,” she says. The silence is so thick it seems her words are the only thing that can break it. Even the shock on Yaz’s face can’t form itself into words. “Lifetimes ago. I killed all my people, and I thought what I’d done was right. And when I found a way to save them, the Master burned it all over again.”

Yaz still doesn’t speak. She’s frozen in place, halfway between the console and the door.

“I’m not a good person, Yaz. I’ve killed more than you could ever imagine. And that’s just what I remember.”

“What do you mean, what you remember?”

“I’ve lived so many lives. I thought I was the thirteenth. The thirteenth me. But there are so many more, and I can’t -” The Doctor can’t breathe. Her chest feels tight, and she has the urge to run. To fix something, to see something beautiful enough it will make everything she feels go away.

Yaz can’t imagine what the Doctor is feeling. She’s barely over two decades old, and she still sometimes feels ancient. Like she’s lived too long, though she always silences that thought quickly. To be old enough to not know your age? To have lived dozens of lives? She understands why the Doctor keeps secrets.

“Whoever they were, those other selves, I know this self pretty well,” Yaz says. “And I think you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met.”

The Doctor’s eyes are watery when they meet Yaz’s. “You too.”

Yaz sits on the floor beside the Doctor. They lean against the Tardis console and don’t speak for several minutes.

“I still miss them,” the Doctor says eventually. “After everything.”

“Who?”

“Gallifrey. The Time Lords. The Master.” She shrugs.

Yaz says nothing. It’s better to let the Doctor talk, she thinks. She doesn’t know enough about the situation to ask questions, and anything she said about the Master would be bitter, vitriolic. She doesn’t understand how the Doctor can do anything but hate him.

“I should wait for Graham and Ryan,” the Doctor says. “They have a right to know.”

“We can call them, if you want. But you don’t have to.” Yaz pulls out her phone but doesn’t unlock it. “You don’t have to tell them what you’ve been through if you don’t want to. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Okay.”

Yaz puts her phone back in her pocket. For a moment, she thinks the Doctor won’t say anything after all, that she’s decided it’s too painful. She wouldn’t blame her.

“The Master is my oldest friend. Since we were -- since what I thought was my childhood. They’ve done nothing but betray and hurt me for hundreds of years, and I still can’t let go of that.” The Doctor is crying, making no effort to wipe away the tears but simply staring straight ahead. Yaz doesn’t look, tries to give her as much privacy as possible. “He showed me my real childhood. How the Time Lords were created from torturing and experimenting on a child. And that child was me.”

Yaz wants to hug the Doctor, to tell her everything will be okay. But she can’t promise that, and the Doctor doesn’t like hugs, so she sits absolutely still and feels a bit of her heart break.

“He killed the Time Lords because of what they did to me. And I don’t know if that means he still cares or he hates me. I miss O, even though he was never real. And I can’t let go of the Master, because he’s the only friend I have who won’t die, one day. But even that’s not true anymore, because I let Ko Sharmus kill him.”

She’s properly crying now, shirt pulled over her face, starting to soak from tears and snot. Yaz silently grabs a box of tissues and slides them next to the Doctor.

“Me and Ryan and Graham, we’re not going anywhere. And Jack can’t die.”

“You will, though. Something will happen, and you’ll die, or you’ll leave, and there will be nothing I can do about it. I’ve watched… so many of my friends die. Jack included.”

“Jack’s just in the other room, though,” Yaz says, confused.

“Time travel,” the Doctor sniffles. “Timelines don’t always match up. Did I ever tell you I had a wife? Died the first day I met her.”

“You have us now.” She doesn’t say “I’m sorry,” though they both know she’s thinking it.

The Doctor nods and pulls her shirt down from her face. Her eyes are red, and there’s trails of salt down her cheeks. She reaches toward Yaz and taps her hand. Their fingers lace together, and Yaz squeezes her hand.

“Thank you,” the Doctor says. “For being my fam.”

**Author's Note:**

> the master is definitely not dead lol  
> anyway leave kudos/a comment if u enjoyed!!


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